Options Abound for Minnesota Map-o-philes

Estonian President Lennart Meri, a wonderfully quotable politician, once said that, “If geography is prose, maps are iconography.” He would be pleased at the flurry of cartographic interest that has popped up in recent days on Open Twin Cities, where open government hackers gather.

Maptime MSP is a new meetup, scheduled to hold an informal meeting on Saturday, December 13, 3:00-5:00 p.m. at the Washburn Library, 5244 Lyndale Avenue South. The group which has met just once invites newcomers and beginners to grab a laptop and join the fledging network.

This week’s meeting will follow up on discussion of OpenStreetMap (www.openstreetmap.org), an open data system in which volunteers share a wide range of resources. Contributors include “enthusiastic mappers, GIS professionals, engineers running the OSM servers, humanitarians mapping disaster-affected areas, and many more.”

Local cartographers will also explore an adjunct resource, Missingmaps (www.missingmaps.org). Missing Maps supports the OSM Humanitarian Team that deals with maps and data necessary to respond to crises in unmapped regions, with a commitment to building and leaving behind local capacity and access.